Key details revealed about Lewis Hamilton's mysterious Ferrari upgrade at F1 Belgian GP: Reports

The new rear suspension was not the sole upgrade on Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari at the Belgian GP, as the Briton had revealed in his post-race comments. While many speculated about what the upgrade could be, a recent report has suggested that the seven-time champion was running new brake pads, which Charles Leclerc had tested earlier in the season.

Moving from Mercedes, Hamilton had to adapt to the new brake pads at Ferrari, as the Italian giant utilised Brembo brake pads in comparison to the Carbon Industrie ones at his previous employer. With the Briton trying to dwell with the Brembo brakes, the Scuderia opted for Leclerc to run the new brake pads at the Canadian GP.

This allowed the team to test out the performance of the new brakes and gain crucial data. With the initial tests done and dusted, Ferrari equipped the upgrade package on Hamilton's car at the Belgian GP, as the Briton had revealed in the post-race comments:

"There's basically two elements to [the upgrade] and one of those elements we had it to test back in Montreal, but I didn't end up testing it and Charles did and ended up using it for part of it for a couple of races."

According to Autoracerit, the second element of the upgrade was indeed the new brake pads. This finally brought Lewis Hamilton's car to the same specification as his teammate's, three weeks after the upgrade had debuted on the No. 16 Ferrari.

With both the upgrades on his side, the 40-year-old was able to climb up from the rear of the grid to finish seventh at the Belgian GP.

---

Lewis Hamilton is looking forward to the Hungarian GP to better utilise the upgrades

Lewis Hamilton at the 2025 F1 Grand Prix of Belgium - Source: Getty

Lewis Hamilton's Belgian GP weekend started with a costly mistake during sprint qualifying, ruling him out of contention for points on Saturday. The Briton subsequently repeated his torrid performance during qualifying for the main Grand Prix, leaving a lot to do on the table for the scarlet racer on Sunday.

With a rain delay turning his pit lane start into a rolling start, Hamilton aimed to capitalise on the opportunity and eventually finished seventh. Though he admitted his qualifying blunders cost Ferrari precious points, he remained optimistic and looks forward to the Hungarian GP to get back to his usual business:

“We’ve also got a change of [data] engineer and we're both in the deep end basically. I think we did a really good job overnight to rectify some of the issues, and to tweak and fine-tune it, and the car was so much better today to drive." "This one is definitely one to put behind me. I definitely feel confident going forward and learned more about the car today. I'll set that up better for next week [in Hungary]. I don't see why we can't have better results moving forward."

Hamilton remains sixth in the drivers' standings as Charles Leclerc extends his advantage over the Briton to 30 points.

Edited by pranavsethii